How To Adapt Your Social Media Content
Strategy to Algorithm Changes

Glenn Winters | January 12, 2024

As a brand leader or founder, you spend so much time trying to do right by your brand. You try to stay up to speed on the latest news and business best practices, put together a plan, and then you head to your social media only to find your content FLOPS… The *algorithm* has changed.

And all the people in the back said, “Ah, f*uck.”

So what can social media managers and founders do to adapt their social media strategy when there’s platform updates and algorithm changes? The short answer is you don’t need to do anything, and we’d love to tell you why! Here’s 3 things to remember to keep your brand’s momentum moving forward when the algorithm changes and all your hard work feels like it’s in jeopardy.

1. There’s a difference between a new feature and the algorithm

A new feature is a thing that a platform itself will be talking about because it’s new. These are the types of updates that Instagram boss, Adam Mosseri, likes to share on his feed, like:
These types of format updates and feature rollouts can make for sensational headlines from news outlets and overconfident marketing gurus, but more than anything, they benefit the platform itself vs. the users. In these moments, the platform will do everything in its power to hook users into its newly created social-validation feedback loop to coax more contributions and engagement with the new tool, all in an effort to increase user time on the platform.

The algorithm, by comparison, is the set of rules and calculations used to rank and promote content on a given social media platform, that analyzes billions of data points and executes commands to prioritize content in users' feeds. No one really knows how the algorithm fully works, not even the people and engineers who built them, which is highly problematic for numerous reasons.

The point is, it’s important to consider your own reaction to what the platforms are doing to benefit its own bottom line, and if making rash updates to your entire social strategy is worth the effort to pivot in the short term and the long term, considering the next update is inevitably just around the corner.

2. Strategy and tactics are not the same thing

3. Positive ROI on social media doesn’t require the algorithm’s blessing

We’ve been reading reports and analyzing data from working hands-on with hundreds of brands privately this past year, and one thing is abundantly clear: there’s 5 common, yet avoidable marketing mistakes getting in the way of building a results-driven, measurable, growth-driving marketing program.

1.  Chasing trends - Align every piece of content to a business goal for efficient sustainable growth.
2.  Doing too much - The biggest lie in marketing is: “The more you do, the faster you'll grow.” Instead solve problems in the right order, optimize what's working, and repeat.
3.  Delegating without a Playbook - You cannot delegate what you have not defined for your brand. Delegating with a proven Playbook keeps it off your plate while still driving positive ROI, and will act as your True North when a junior social media hire gets antsy and advocates for heading down attractive, distracting, algorithm-pleasing rabbit trails.
4.  Dimming your message - Every corner of social media is crowded. Your point of view needs to be so sharp that it cuts through the noise so you can serve your customers what they've been craving.
5.  Guessing if social media is working - When you align your content to business goals, you can systematically and sustainably measure your ROI. The S3 System from Strong Brand Social is the only way to do that.

Spoiler alert, our approach to social media marketing gives a big 🖕 to padding the bottom line of Big Tech, and it doesn’t involve praying to the algo gods. Our most popular workshop, F* The Algorithm! is designed to simplify the chaos machine of social media and drive powerful growth with content that supports your unique business goals and differentiates you from the masses.